


Stiff Drink

by ladderax (allnuthatchforest)



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Falling In Love, Lactation Kink, M/M, Mpreg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-06
Updated: 2011-10-06
Packaged: 2017-10-24 08:50:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/261432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allnuthatchforest/pseuds/ladderax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur's had a baby, and his doctor told him he should be able to produce milk, but he's unable to, and nothing so far has helped. Eames (who is not his boyfriend) reads that nipple stimulation by an adult can sometimes help with milk production, and he's more than happy to offer Arthur his services in this capacity.</p><p>Written for Inception Kink Fest 2.0</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stiff Drink

Eames likes jicama. It’s sweet and crunchy and tastes like early summer; plus it goes well with cilantro, which is his favorite green thing after Godzilla (money is nice too, but it’s not always green). But looking down at his shopping cart, a landfill (though a clean and appetizing one) of ethereal crinkles and tubes and rumpled leaves he already can no longer identify, he wonders exactly what he’s going to do with ten of the fleshy off-white tubers. He grabbed them on an impulse because he was so happy to see them—he was similarly happy to see butter—but he knows he should probably put some back.

He’s heading back towards the produce section when he sees a familiar back-of-a-head. Unlike jicama, Eames isn’t a big fan of unexpectedly running into people he knows. He likes having time to smooth out his figurative wrinkles, figure out what he wants to say and how.

But then the un-strange back-of-head turns around to grab a stalk of Brussels sprouts that looks like some ungodly medieval weapon, and Eames is stuck. There’s no choice but to go forward.

“Fancy seeing you fulfilling a basic human need,” Eames says brightly. He lines his cart up parallel with the not-stranger’s. Two faces are looking back at him; an adult male one, rather handsome, and a small, chubby one peeping out from the side of a sack, squished against the adult male’s chest all wide eyes and uncanny titanium-gray stare ( _Is this how Skynet has decided to get us after all?_ )

“Yeah, you know, have to get out sometimes.” Arthur looks down at the top of the baby’s head and strokes the mothwing-soft hair with a thumb.

The baby just keeps staring at Eames, and neither one breaks deadlock. “You’re kind of freaking me out, kid,” he mutters benignly. Then the baby’s eyes wrinkle and his wet mouth opens into a smile with a bit of drool runoff. Eames smiles back without even meaning to.

“He does that,” Arthur says fondly.

Eames glances at the contents of Arthur’s cart. He always looks into other people’s carts in passing to try to gain some insight into them.

Arthur has the kind of bread Eames knows to have the highest fiber content. He also has milk, honey, baking flour, apples, pears, and Romaine lettuce. And judging by the places he’s already stopped, he’s also apparently charted a Hamiltonian path through the massive supermarket, probably as much for fun as for efficiency. He’s also got a couple of jars of infant formula. Which makes sense, since he’s got an infant.

But it doesn’t seem to mesh with what Arthur confessed to Eames while pregnant, somewhat reluctantly, after Eames asked how he was going to feed the wee mite.

 _Dr Barnes_ —that was the experiment’s director, the one who had enabled Arthur to get pregnant— _says I should be able to feed him myself, that I shouldn’t have to use formula_ , Arthur had said one night when they were alone at the office working late. Eames remembered the moment well, because Arthur had had a giant gob of grape jelly on the left side of his mouth from the grape-jelly-and-bacon-on-rye sandwich he was eating.

“Formula?” Eames asks him now.

“Yeah, I was running low,” Arthur says, bouncing Will slightly in his arms.

“Which means that you’ve got what, only got fifty canisters left at home, right?” Eames chuckles, pleased with his own wit as he tends to be. “But I meant—you said you were going to feed him—Sorry. I shouldn’t pry.”

Arthur looks at Eames warily, and Eames feels like an asshole. “No, you shouldn’t.” For a second Eames thinks he is going to storm off dramatically to the exit music of squeaking cart wheels and gurgling baby vowels. But instead he leans in. “It turns out I can’t. Which is fine, I guess. I’m going to see someone about it in a couple of days.”

Eames just nods.

“We should probably get going,” Arthur says. “We’ve got somewhere to be in an hour. By the way”—he glances pointedly into Eames’s cart—“what _are_ you planning to do with all that jicama?”

“I don’t know,” Eames says defensively. “I’ll figure something out, OK?”

*

When Eames gets home he lines his jicamas up on the counter. All ten of them, bristly bodiless heads like monks buried in quicksand. He’d meant to put them back, but after his encounter with Arthur it slipped his mind. Now when he isn’t thinking about jicama salad, his thoughts keep wandering to lactation. Just the mechanics of it. He didn’t know much about it beyond dripping breasts and babies’ grabby little hands.

He sits down at his computer and types in “lactation failure.” He looks over website after website, common reasons for failure to produce milk. Then something catches his eye.

He’s unable not to click on the Wikipedia entry for “erotic lactation.” It’s pure curiosity—right?—curiosity about the desires, the rationale, the logistics; wondering why other people saw such appeal in the idea of swollen milk-dripping nipple. He’s in the business of breaking down fantasies and building them back up out of shinier and rarer-looking materials, like mossy postwar earls’ manors or 3-D remakes starring razor-jawed Paul Walker clones. So the more he can learn about fantasies, the better.

Scanning the erotic lactation article-- _unintended milk flow is often caused by nipple stimulation and it is possible to reach normal milk production exclusively by suckling on the breast; the heteronormative profile of breastfeeding assumes certain norms; lactation pornography is a special niche—_

He gets stuck on a line—

_ANRs have also been employed in cases where a mother may desire to breastfeed her child, but has to find an alternative to inducing lactation. She may have difficulty beginning lactation, so supplements the infants's suckling with that of a partner…such scenarios do not have erotic motivations…_

Eames has never been the good Samaritan type in general, but there are people he trusts, and people he grows to like; the two categories don’t always overlap, but when they do, he has this little problem: he wants to be useful and good. He remembers the circumstances of the phone call. 5 pm; Sofia, Bulgaria; sky like clotted cream; a woman with a frizzy dog and a rain-proof headscarf banging on the door of the phone booth. I’m flying in through Dulles, he’d said, which was the code they’d used the previous job for I’m in serious trouble. And Arthur, who could easily have bought 20 Maseratis and Liechtenstein with the price on Eames’s head, pulled strings, sweet-talked. Convinced them they had the wrong guy. Got him out.

In short, he owes Arthur a lot. It’s the least he can do to offer to help him out of his bind.

“Yeah?” Arthur picks up the phone after the third ring. Eames hears Will screaming in the background; he wonders if the entire Industrial Revolution produced so much noise.

Eames balances a pen between thumb and index finger and lets it tip back and forth until it looks illusorily like it’s made of rubber (this is why it’s called the Rubber Pen Trick). He’s stumped as to what to say next. He’d wager that there’s no etiquette manual in the world that tells you the proper way to ask your male co-worker if he’d like you to suck his nipples to help him produce breastmilk.

“Are you in trouble?” Arthur asks.

“No, no.” Eames sticks the pen cap in his mouth. “I was just wondering—I’ve been reading some articles—“

“I’m glad,” Arthur says, and Eames can hear his smirk. “Regardless of what I may have said on occasion, I never doubted that you were literate and well informed.”

Eames wishes there were a way to flick Arthur’s skull through the phone.

“What I was trying to say is—“ Then the words just spill out. “I found out that sometimes it helps to have someone, an adult, suck your nipples if you can’t breastfeed. It can stimulate the flow of the milk. It’s not a sexual thing; they have professionals who do it.” Deep breath. “So I’m offering my services.”

Silence on the other end.

“That’s actually what the person I was going to see does,” Arthur says. Eames doesn’t know the reason for the slow crumpling feeling in his chest.

“Oh, that’s excellent,” Eames says, trying to sound as vibrant as a steel drum and probably failing.

*

The next day at work Eames has a hard time looking Arthur in the eye.

For the past year they’ve been living in San Francisco, working for a megarich software company that uses dreamshare to siphon off not only its rivals’ articulated plans but also their thought processes, their visual and emotional and gut-level impressions. Basically, to steal their ideas before they even know they have them. Eames uses the term living in loosely; he still flits in and out, living in unfurnished flats and rented rooms wherever the job takes him. But he likes the steady appointment more than he likes to admit. He likes bougainvillea. He likes the almost sci-fi polish and variety of supermarkets.

And he likes having a friend in the city. A real friend, that rarest of commodities. Even if they don’t sit on the couch watching glossy USA shows together.

Eames can’t look Arthur in the eye and Arthur doesn’t seem to be doing too well at it either. When they notice each other it’s like they’ve bumped into each other from 20 feet away; there are half-spoken apologies, little coughs, attempts to put themselves back together.

They’re planning the kidnapping (or “borrowing” as the extractor likes to call it, which makes both Eames and Arthur snicker a bit) of a game developer. The architect and the extractor are both under.

“Do you ever wonder if this is all backfiring?” Arthur asks suddenly. “We let them act as the dreamer; they make all of these magnificent things, and it feels incredibly vivid and real, and it probably gives them a ton of new ideas that they can use in ways that EpiTech wouldn’t even think of.”

“It probably is,” Eames shrugs. “I only care about Epi insofar as they give me a chance to fuck around and get paid for it.”

“Eames,” Arthur says, finally looking Eames in the eye, “I’m sorry about last night. I hope I didn’t embarrass you. I didn’t mean to.”

Eames runs his fingers along the edges of the stack of paper in front of him and aligns it neatly as he often does when he’s bored or anxious.

“It’s no problem at all. I wasn’t offended. I just thought, because you know me, and it might save you money, because I’d do it for free—“

Arthur’s lips turn down. “But she’s a professional—“

Eames huffs. “Arthur, I’ll have you know that I am just three credits shy of a Masters’ degree in tit-sucking from Cambridge, and I took an A-level in advanced nipple stimulation. I think I’m well qualified.”

Arthur burst into laughter.

“I’ll think about it.” He paused. “Alright. Yes. We can try it.”

*

Eames shows up at the hotel a half an hour early. He’d had his hand on a bottle of wine at the store, wanting to bring something that could relax Arthur, but then he remembered that if Arthur was trying to breastfeed he wouldn’t want to drink alcohol.

Then he considered bringing the bottle of wine for himself.

Then he considered drinking the entire bottle of wine before he even got to the hotel.

But Eames’s blood alcohol level is 0.0 as he paces back and forth across the lozenge-shaped tiles in the hotel lobby, unable to sit still. He pulls the anthers out of fake orchids until he sees the concierge shaking his head at him. He looks at travel brochures and restaurant guides, wonders if he should have taken Arthur out to dinner before pushing him down onto a hotel bed and stimulating parts of his body.

Eames has been at the hotel for forty-five minutes when he gets a text from Arthur.

EAMES, I CAN’T DO IT. I’M SORRY.

Eames understands, he completely understands, but he throws the bag of Formosa oolong tea in the trash on his way out the door.

 

*

If work had been strained before, now there’s an electric fence between them that disciplines Eames every time he tries to get too close. Arthur talks to him, he talks to Arthur, but it feels like they first met.

(Maybe not quite like when _they_ first met. There was no fatal moment when something tips and you decide to smash that housewarming bottle of wine against a doorjamb and turn it into a makeshift dagger. Figuratively speaking, of course.

A tulip is what Eames’s older brother called such a weapon, because if it’s broken in the right place it looks like—But anyway—)

He knows Arthur doesn’t hate him, figures he’s probably more embarrassed. But broaching the subject would be likely to make Arthur more embarrassed. And if no one talked about it, would their relationship eventually revert to normal? In-jokes and a lot of shared history they only occasionally shared with each other in the same physical space, at the office and at working lunches but never at home. Never anywhere they could allow themselves to be tired or truly alone.

And there are no more late nights working with Arthur anymore. When Arthur can work from home, he does.

This is why Eames ends up asking Arthur to dinner one night. They’d spent all day in a dark room watching soundless surveillance videos, watching people like wads of fuzzy unraveled thread float down the same hallway over and over and over, and Eames needs to hear voices, needs to be with people rather than over them, cyclopic, hooked into place like a tree cyst.

Arthur says no. He tries to set a routine, Arthur says, tries not to leave Will with the nanny too long. OK, Eames says. Maybe some other time? Yeah, maybe, Arthur says, noncommittally, turning the keys in his ignition.

*

“What the fuck’s wrong with you tonight?” the bartender asks, pouring Eames another scotch.

“What? Nothing’s ever wrong with me. I have purposely engineered my life so it’s got none of the things in it that usually go wrong.” He drains the glass and rests his chin on his hand. There’s a football game on TV, Real Madrid playing Barcelona, and Eames can’t even concentrate on Iker Casillas’s legs, much less the actual progress of the game.

If Eames had to tell his problem, the sanitized version of it, to someone, what would he say, he wonders? My friend had a kid and doesn’t have time for me anymore? I tried to do someone a favor and they didn’t want it and now I feel rejected and am pouting like a kicked dog?

He almost doesn’t feel his phone vibrating in his pocket. He picks it up. It’s Arthur.

“What are you up to?” Arthur asks.

“Just—hanging out—with people,” he answers. It’s not a lie. There are people around.

“Are you drunk?” Arthur questions.

“No. Not at all.”

“I’m not continuing this conversation until you recite the alphabet backwards.” Silence. “Eames. I’m kidding.”

“Oh.”

“What I wanted to talk to you about is—I changed my mind. The thing with the professional didn’t work out. If you’re still willing to help me, I think I can do it.”

“Oh. Fantastic. When do you want to start?”

Eames doesn’t know why he wasn’t this terrified before. But he’s terrified now.

*

The hotel room is chilly even with the heat cranked up. The curtains smell musty and the bedsheets feel damp, and Eames is pissed. He wants the bed Arthur lies on to be soft and dry, the air he breathes clean.

“I understand your objections,” Arthur says, moving to sit on the bed. His jacket is spread neat and lovely as a spiderweb across the back of a chair, and he’s down to his half-unbuttoned shirt and trousers. “But if I hesitate I may not have the nerve again. This is still weird for me.”

“Of course.” Eames undoes his shoelaces and slides his shoes off.

The curtains are also fucking ugly.

“So how should we do this? How do you want me? To sit, I mean. Or lie down. Should I be sitting over you, or on my back?” Arthur asks. Eames ponders it for a moment.

“You should lie down. Get comfortable.” Eames fluffs up a pillow and slides it behind Arthur’s neck.

“It’s OK,” Arthur smiles a sliver. “I can do that.”

“You need to relax.”

Arthur takes a deep breath and hums on the exhale. He lets his hands uncurl and his arms flop at his sides. After a few moments, Arthur’s eyelids drift open. “I’m ready.”

Arthur pulls his shirt open, exposing his swollen nipples. But his shirt is still buttoned below the sternum. “Don’t you think it’ll be more comfortable if you take your shirt off?” Eames asks.

“No, this is fine. Can we start?” Eames nods and crawls to lie on his side parallel to Arthur.

Arthur’s breasts are mostly flat as ever, but they’re definitely full of milk. He’s always had defined pecs, but now they’re tender beneath Eames’s first exploratory touch; he can press into them lightly, feel the give.

“Does that hurt?” he asks Arthur, running his hands in soothing semi-circles over the fleshy part of his breasts.

Arthur shakes his head. “Just a little sore. But that feels good. Keep doing it.”

Eames continues to massage Arthur’s pecs and watches for any signs of discomfort in Arthur’s face. When Arthur seems to have been lulled into relaxation by Eames’s strokes, Eames gathers the courage to add his mouth to the coalition of light touches. He lowers his lips to Arthur’s nipple and fastens it around the nub, careful not to give the impression of a kiss or anything of the sort. Arthur takes in a sharp breath through his nostrils.

It’s then that Eames begins to feel utterly lost. Should he use his tongue? How hard should he suck? For how long?

“How do you want me to do this?” Eames asks, pulling his head away from Arthur’s nipple. “I want it to feel good.”

Arthur squirms a bit, and Eames can feel him trying to pull his body away.

“I hope that’s not too forward of me to ask. But I don’t know what I should do with my tongue. Unfortunately, it’s a permanent resident in my mouth, so I’m not sure if I should send it to its room when there are guests or let it come down for dinner.”

Arthur smiles. Eames is relieved; joking could really have gone either way.

“Use your tongue if it helps,” Arthur says cryptically. _Helps what?_

But Eames and his tongue are glad. Eames restarts his ministrations tongue-first, licking the tip of the nipple delicately. In the name of trying anything. _Any stimulation is good stimulation, right?_ Then he closes his lips into a snug O and tugs at Arthur’s nipple, tugs it as far as it’ll go. Which isn’t very far, and it pops out of his mouth, and he rushes to reclaim it with his tongue again, lapping broad strokes.

Though the action is pleasant, at first time moves slowly. He alternates sucking with lapping, a sort of binary code of the mouth, O the mouth tugging, 1 the tongue stroking, 0 the mouth, 1 the tongue…He moves to the other nipple. Soon the rhythm begins to hypnotize him. His eyes are fluttering closed; the heinous box-wine burgundy curtains blend like powder into everything around them. All he’s aware of is Arthur’s breathing, Arthur’s chest moving evenly up and down, Arthur—

Arthur’s watch is beeping.

“It’s three now,” Arthur says. “I have to get going.” He begins to button his shirt back up and Eames is suddenly aware that that’s his saliva gleaming on Arthur’s nipples. He’d begun to drool a little when he was in the midst of forgetting himself.

Arthur goes home to his son.

Eames goes into the bathroom, opens his fly, and begins to touch his cock.

*

5 am and Eames has just begun to drift into the kind of vague agitated half-sleep where you can fall into a hole between beats in a song on the radio and come out what feels like minutes later to find that the song is right where you left it. Eames doesn’t like to surround himself with unnecessary noise; he likes to be able to hear what’s going on, to know if that rustling sound is a raccoon in the trash or if he’ll really have to use the Beretta 92 he keeps under the pillow in the bed beside him, in the place where a partner’s head might rest if he had one. But tonight he indulges himself. He never could resist 80’s dance music.

His phone starts to dance on his bedside table, and he picks it up. (Jeff from “Community” was right, he thinks; vibrate really is fucking louder.)

“Mr. Eames?” says a woman’s voice, low and velvety, with a thick Japanese accent.

“Ikeda-san,” he says, trying to clear the grogginess from his throat.

“Mr. Saito has a job for you.”

Ikeda explains. For decades Proclus has been backing American political candidates who legislate for the company’s best interests, but dreamshare puts them in a unique position not only to support their favored candidates, but to undermine the opposition.

Judging by the results of early primaries, Karen Lloyd, a junior senator from Nebraska, is looking to be their candidate’s main challenger. What Saito wants is for Eames to help perform inception on Lloyd not all at once, but slowly, over a period of months, depending on how the election is going.

“Couldn’t you just incept her to drop out of the race?” Eames asked. “Or to support Proclus?” Ikeda says no; the point is to discredit Lloyd, make her look impractical and radical, out of the competition entirely, not just for this election but for the foreseeable future. Besides, she says, there have been no tests on how lasting the effects of inception are; a familiar stimulus could trigger an old desire.

The appointment, Ikeda says, would be indefinite. As long as Lloyd was in the running, Eames would have to be on call to shape the future of the election at a moment’s notice. It could be two years. It could be more. It would involve posing as a secret service agent, gaining Lloyd’s trust. The risk of failure, or exposure, was great and perpetual.

It’s awfully tempting.

*

“I might be taking another job,” Eames says casually as Arthur is opening his shirt. Over the past few weeks they’ve fallen into a routine; for an hour every other day they go to a hotel, take off their shoes, lie side by side on a bed so that Eames can feed. There’s still nothing for him to feed on, though, and Arthur’s getting visibly frustrated. He leaves in resigned silence every day. _We should probably just stop trying soon,_ he says.

“Mmmm?” Arthur asks. “A job? What kind of job?”

Eames feels guilty for bringing up the subject. Ikeda expressly warned him about giving any details away, even to his closest friends. And Saito already has a point man lined up. He was reluctant to hire Arthur after his oversight in researching Fischer.

“Just something long term. I’ll tell you when I know more,” he lies.

Arthur doesn’t respond to that. He rests his head on his arm and arches his back.

The hours of sucking and leaning over have begun to put a strain on Eames’s neck. He feels a twinge now when he bends to touch his lips to Arthur’s nipple.

“Are you alright?” Arthur asks, seeing Eames wincing and massaging the back of his neck.

“Yeah, I think I just need to stretch for a moment.”

Arthur sits up against the headboard. “We could try it in another position,” he says. “I could lean over you. You could put your head in my lap—it might be more comfortable.”

Eames doesn’t want to inconvenience Arthur or cross any boundaries. But Arthur’s the one who suggested it.

Arthur pulls a pillow on to his lap. “Come here and lie down,” he says, a smile creeping onto his face. “I’m not going to bite.”

So Eames eases back onto Arthur’s pillowed knee. “This is nice,” he says in a desperate effort to cut the tension. “I feel a bit more like I’m breastfeeding and less like some sort of tit-vampire.”

Arthur grunts. “I might slap you if you didn’t look so helpless right now.”

“I do feel quite lovable,” Eames laughs.

And Arthur bends down and lowers his nipple to Eames’s mouth. Eames isn’t sure what to do with his hands as he laps at the nipple to get it (and himself) warmed up. His natural impulse is to clasp them over his chest, to give in completely to being a needy, larval creature aching to be fed, but that feels a little creepy. He rests his arms at his side. He fists his hands in the fabric of his trousers.

Eames has to lay his head back down for a moment; the position is more comfortable, but he still has to raise his head to suckle. And then he sees the wet patch on the breast pocket of Arthur’s gray dress shirt.

“Arthur,” he says frantically. “Arthur, you’re lactating.”

Arthur looks down at his shirt, looks slowly back at Eames, joy beginning to illuminate his face. “So I am.”

“Come on.” Eames tugs gently at the edge of Arthur’s shirt. “You can’t be comfortable in that. It’s all wet. Take it off, let it dry for a bit while I try to keep the milk flow steady.”

Arthur smoothes the shirt out. “That’s alright. I’m fine.”

“Arthur, come on, I’m not going to judge you or anything—“

“No. You want me to take my shirt off? Here.”

Suddenly, at alarming speed, Arthur pops open the remaining buttons and flings his shirt off. He’s still got his baby weight on, soft belly and lovehandles, and his abdomen is covered with long purple stretchmarks. Eames just wants to touch him.

“I’m sorry,” Eames says. “I shouldn’t have.”

Arthur just leans back against the headboard and turns his face away. And Eames runs to the bathroom and grabs the bathrobe, which he tries to slide behind Arthur’s back and over his shoulders. Wearily, Arthur puts his arms in the sleeves, arranges the robe’s length beneath him, closes the lapels over his chest.

After a few minutes, he says Eames, and pulls the rope open over his left nipple.

“You sure?” Eames asks.

“Yeah,” says Arthur listlessly.

Arthur’s milk flows into his mouth in spurts at first. Then it starts streaming steadily. It’s sweet and watery, much more sugary than cow’s milk. Eames abandons the feeling that he shouldn’t be enjoying it, and he just drinks. He lets the warmth fill up his mouth, lets it hit the back of his tongue and the bitten insides of his cheeks. _This is so warm because it was warmed by Arthur’s body,_ he marvels. _Arthur’s body made this._

Eames pumps a little onto his finger and offers it to Arthur. “Want a taste? It’s delicious.”

Arthur grimaces, seems to be asking Eames _Are you serious?_ with his eyes.

Eames licks the droplets off his own finger instead. “We can get a paper cup.”

Arthur lies back, retreating into the warmth of the big robe, looking sleepy and dazed. It didn’t occur to Eames before that breastfeeding could be so exhausting, and Eames would give a lot right now to pull back the covers of the bed, usher Arthur into it, and climb in next to him. Eames imagines his fingers tangling in terrycloth. His hand on Arthur’s hip. Slipping his fingers inside the bathrobe while he asks, _is this okay?_ and caressing Arthur’s beautiful belly as he says things that can’t help slipping out at this point.

“Eames?” Arthur’s trying to get his attention. Eames is the dazed one now.

“Yeah?”

“You’re a decent guy, Eames. Have to say, I will miss you when your new job swallows you up. This is a really good thing you’ve done for me.”

“Your boy is lucky to have you,” Eames says softly.

*

Eames and Arthur have never left the hotel together, and they don’t leave together today.

Before he returns home to return Ikeda’s phone call, he stops off at a bodega to buy beer and a Spanish newspaper. He looks at the rows of canned soft drinks and remembers the time he got Arthur to try tamarind soda by telling him it tasted like cherry. Arthur had spit it out on Eames’s shoes.

Arthur is fun, he thinks wistfully. Even when he’s not fun.

*

“If you decide to take the job, we’re going to need you in Tokyo by next Thursday,” Ikeda tells him. “Mr. Saito is naturally going to want to brief you in person. And two weeks after that there is an important television appearance by the candidate. We must begin the first of the inceptions before then.”

Eames takes a lengthy drag from his cigarillo. He looks out at the uphill-creeping city lights and imagines watching himself from a great distance, in the window of an apartment or treading up a steep road. Would he even recognize himself in that instance?

He wonders from how far away Arthur would be able to recognize him. And then all the verbiage falls away from his thoughts and he’s only left with Arthur. The clean, powdery smell of his skin and the taste of him, leaking hot milk onto Eames’s tongue, trusting him.

“I can’t take the job, Ikeda-san,” Eames says.

“You could change the course of the world,” she says. “Is it too dangerous for you?”

If he took the job he’d have to be deep undercover. He wouldn’t be able to speak to anyone from his old life who wasn’t on his list of acceptable contacts. He might be convicted of espionage.

“No,” he says.

“Do you disagree with our aims or our methods?”

“No.”

“Is there someone you love, someone you’re unwilling to leave?”

Arthur poring over pages of schematics with the eraser of a leadholder between his lips. Arthur’s strong, thick fingers loading cartridges into the magazine of his assault rifle. Arthur lying on his back with eyes half-closed and what might be a smile.

“Yes.”

*

“How was the Verbarium guy?” Arthur asks. Arthur hasn’t been in a dream since he started trying to get pregnant, so he relies on others to fill him in. And Eames enjoys telling Arthur stories.

Eames sips his coffee. “Oh, believe me, you didn’t miss anything. We spent two hours inside a word processor document. Literally. The most exciting thing was when it started to track changes.”

“What did your projections look like in a dream like that?” Arthur laughs.

“Like that horrible Microsoft Word paperclip man. No, they were actually just words on the page. Granted, some of them were words like _kill_ and _decapitate_ , but…And we had no idea what would happen at that point, if our projections would just start to eat through the program like a virus, but they stayed calm.”

“You’re lucky you’re getting to do an inception again.” Arthur tears open a packet of sugar and drizzles it into his coffee.

“Mmm,” Eames says in assent. “Wait a second. I never told you I was doing an inception.”

“You seemed excited about it. And I knew you’d been wanting to try it under circumstances that were less completely insane,” says Arthur calmly.

“Arthur, you’re lying. I can tell.”

Arthur puts his cup down on the table. “Are you really in love with me?”

Eames spits scalding liquid all over his hand. “ _What?_ ”

“Do you love me or did you just say that to Ikeda so you wouldn’t sound like an idealist or a coward for not taking the job?”

Eames’s first thought in a tricky situation is always about how to get out of it. But he knows that getting out isn’t really the proper course of action here. Getting out of this situation, avoiding this situation, is what got him here in the first place.

“First of all, yes, I love you, you sneaky bastard. Very much so. Second, how did you know about Ikeda’s offer?”

“Because.” Arthur looks smug. “I put Ikeda up to it. There was no Saito job.”

“Why?” Eames splutters. “Why would you do a thing like that? “

The smugness vanishes from Arthur’s face. “Because I wanted to know if it was time to stop hoping.”

*

Arthur’s the kind of person whose organizational logic is completely indecipherable to an outsider. On his kitchen table there are stacks of papers so tall they look like they’re about to bend over like Slinkies. Yet he knows what and where everything is.

“Sorry about the mess.” Arthur hefts a few of the stacks onto the floor so they can actually see each other across the table. Eames attentively chews a forkful of Arthur’s honey cake, moist and spicy, and it makes him want to stretch out like a cat in front of a fireplace. He doesn’t want to leave Arthur’s house, ever, although he knows this moment isn’t representative and any moment the allspice-and-cinnamon lull could be punctured by a sound that could, if not wake the dead, at least kill the living.

“I guess I shouldn’t have tricked you like that. I just wanted to know if I meant enough to you for you to stick around. I don’t have time or energy to pine anymore.”

Eames’s fingertips brush Arthur’ s knuckles. “I think I might be completely whipped, Arthur,” he says. “I don’t think I can be the Marlboro Man, and believe me, I’ve tried. Whether I realized it or not, I think I lived in hope that one day you might need me for something.”

“I’m not very good at telling people what I need.” With his free hand Arthur strokes Eames’s wrist; Eames feels his the hairs on his arm prickle, and it threatens to turn into a full-body reaction.

Eames leans in. “What do you need now, love? Would you like me to touch you?”

Arthur runs his fingertips up Eames’s forearm.

*

The couch is cramped, but they lie side by side, holding each other tightly to reduce their overall volume (and for other reasons).

“Are you still healing?” Eames asks, cupping the back of Arthur’s neck and rubbing circles into the nape with his thumb.

“I think we’ll be fine as long as nothing’s too rough.” Arthur bites Eames’s cheek.

Their clothes stay on. Eames maneuvers a thigh between Arthur’s legs and feels Arthur’s hardness against it, and all he can think of is letting Arthur rut against his hip until he gets what he needs. He pulls Arthur on top of him and puts his hands on Arthur’s hips, encouraging the slow steady pace with which Arthur grinds his cock into Eames’s thigh. Arthur buries his face in the juncture of Eames’s neck and shoulder and moans. It sounds like frustration, like raw need built up.

Eames wraps his arms around Arthur’s back and mutters things that may or may not be appropriate to the situation but feel right anyway. “Shhhh, it’s OK, you’re doing beautifully, oh, God, perfect—“

And then the kid starts wailing.

“Shit, that’s a hungry cry,” Arthur jumps off of Eames and has to stand still for a moment. “I’ll be right back.”

Arthur’s back almost an hour later. “He had to eat,” he explains, “and then there had to be kisses and cuddles, because that’s important, and I didn’t bring him out here because I didn’t want to weird you out and think I wanted you to help me parent my child…I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d left.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

Arthur bites his lips. “No.”

“And I don’t want to leave either, but if you need me to I will.” He pulls Arthur in for a soft kiss. He kisses Arthur’s eyelids, then his nose, then his neck, and presses a kiss to the just-visible peak of each nipple beneath Arthur’s shirt.

 

When Will falls asleep for the night, they crawl into bed. Arthur says all he can do right now is sleep, but fifteen minutes later Eames feels Arthur’s hand reaching behind him to rest on Eames’s hip.

“I want you to fuck me,” Arthur mumbles into a pillow. “I’m fucking exhausted, but I can’t stop thinking about your cock and I need it.”

“Do you have lube?” Eames asks, sucking Arthur’s earlobe into his mouth.

“Against staggering odds, yes. Bottom drawer.”

“Condoms?”

“Same place.”

Eames sits up and turns the light on to locate the lube and doff his pajama bottoms. Then he helps Arthur remove his clothes. Arthur’s not lying about being exhausted; his limbs work against him, his body droops over the pillow a bit like a limp pickle.

Then Eames turns the light off and pulls the covers back over them. He coats his fingers with lube, then wraps Arthur’s fingers around his wrist.

“Show me where to go,” Eames murmurs between kisses to Arthur’s neck.

He prepares Arthur, scissors him open, periodically asking if Arthur’s still awake. When Arthur says he’s ready, Eames asks him to guide him in again. He lets Arthur set the pace, lets him move his hips until he’s fully fucked himself on Eames’s cock. Arthur holds Eames’s hips and pulls him in over and over again. “Fuck, come on,” he grunts. Eames tries to slow down, puts his hand over Arthur’s stomach to steady him, but Arthur needs it harder.

Eames slides his hands all over Arthur’s chest and belly; it feels like his birthday, being able to do that. When he reaches up to rub Arthur’s nipple he finds it’s slippery.

“Oh, fuck,” he says, and moves away so he can lie Arthur down on his back.

When Arthur’s lying on his back, legs spread, hands clutching Eames’s shoulders, Eames slides back into him effortlessly. He lets his tongue find Arthur’s wet tits in the dark and laps up the milk that trails down Arthur’s chest. He suckles his nipples and drinks as he fucks him slow and deep.

Neither of them lasts long after Eames wraps his fist around Arthur’s cock. The sound of Arthur losing control in those final spasms of pleasure is enough to bring Eames over the edge, and he’ s dizzy and everything is moon-gravity and he’s shouting Arthur’s name at the top of his voice.

Arthur shoves his hand into Eames’s mouth to shut him up. He sucks on Arthur’s fingers as he comes.

“Oh, god, Arthur,” he whispers, nuzzling into Arthur’s collarbone. “Arthur?”

Arthur is apparently asleep, so Eames wipes him down and arranges the covers over him gently as arranging eggs in a basket, and he presses a last kiss to Arthur’s cheek before he throws an arm over Arthur’s waist and sinks into sleep.

*

“Don’t even worry about me,” Arthur says, giving a package of walnuts a thorough physical exam. Eames could swear Arthur’s got walnuts at home, but he trusts Arthur to know what he needs and doesn’t need for tonight’s dinner. “Get the beer. I’m fine with you drinking in front of me. I haven’t had alcohol in almost a year and a half and I don’t really miss it.”

“That’s alright.” Eames pecks him on the cheek. “I prefer another sort of stiff drink.”

Arthur makes a show of pushing him away before he loops his arm through Eames’s and presses against him. “You are disgusting and—what the hell are all those?”

“Cherimoyas. Mark Twain called them the most delicious fruit known to man.” Eames lifts one out of his basket and tosses it up in the air a few times. Will, bundled against Arthur’s chest, seems to be captivated by this and starts cackling wildly.

“That’s fine, but I swear, Eames, I am going to start levying a produce tax on everything you bring into my house that’s round, green, hairy, squishy, or some combination thereof.”

“Tax away, love. Tax away.”


End file.
